There is a 'very good chance' that the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen will produce a political deal on cutting carbon emissions, according to the British climate change expert Nicholas Stern.

 

Professor Stern, who wrote a key report on the economics of climate change for the UK Government in 2005 and now works at the London School of Economics, said: 'We can and should put together a strong and clear political deal.'

Speaking at Berlin's Technical University on 4 November, he said Copenhagen ought to contain a commitment to cut global annual output of CO2 emissions to 35 gigatonnes from almost 50 gigatonnes now, and around 20 gigatonnes by 2050.

 

But Professor Stern said he did not expect a 'formal treaty' to be signed in Copenhagen. This echoed a series of comments from global policymakers that a full legal treaty would be agreed next year.

 

John Kerry, the Democrat who chairs the US Senate foreign relations committee, said on 4 November that there would not be enough time to 'put the language together and flesh out every crossed t and dotted i of a treaty'.

 

Todd Stern, the US State Department's climate change envoy, agreed, saying: 'We should make progress towards a political agreement that hits each of the main elements.'

 

British officials said the UK had always envisaged that the ambition at Copenhagen was to produce a politically-binding agreement that would form the basis of a legally-enforceable treaty that would take weeks or months of painstaking work by international lawyers and negotiators.

 

Meanwhile Senator Kerry announced said that he and Republican Sen Lindsay Graham and independent Sen Joe Lieberman would work with business groups and the White House to put together a compromise proposal for a target for reducing US carbon emissions that could get 60 votes in the Senate.

 

Sen Kerry and fellow Democrat Sen Barbara Boxer have drawn up a bill that would cut carbon emissions 20% by 2020 from 2005 levels but which has encountered Republication opposition.